Judge turns down Apple’s request for users’ iPhone data

March 4, 2016 – In a brief two-page order issued today, federal district court judge Jon S. Tigar sided with the firm’s clients and rejected Apple’s efforts to invade Plaintiffs’ iDevice data in a far-reaching class action against it involving the alleged surreptitious uploading of address book data by several highly-popular mobile apps available on the Apple App Store. Apple had sought production of the contacts data from Plaintiffs’ iDevices as well as certain other data files, telling Judge Tigar in its supporting legal memorandum that nothing showed this data “to be highly sensitive, or indeed, private at all” and that there is “no colorable argument for why such data could be considered private.” This filing comes as Apple is engaged in what the U.S. Department of Justice has termed a massive public relations campaign to burnish its privacy “brand” to defeat the federal government’s own effort to crack the iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists responsible for killing 12 people in San Bernardino late last Fall. Apple’s appeal to Judge Tigar comes on the heels of a coordinated investigation by Apple and its lawyers into Plaintiffs’ personal and social media life, following the first class certification motion in the matter.